“So, uh, what do we do now?”
The higher levels of the relays were always almost empty. That was why Frost had picked the top level of the Kronia Relay as his little meeting place. The only thing here that could bother them was a single relay operative but they were either blind, deaf or both and never seemed to move.
“About what?” Volt had been rather busy lately. Between working his way through tough Sortie missions and doing bounties on the plains. He’d been blocking things out and doing his best not to think about the future.
“About…” Frost’s voice dropped to a rather worried whisper. “About…” Suddenly he paused. “Come on, kid, you fucking saw it! That… thing… And Lotus…”
Titania, who was waiting for her name to scroll by on the Founders Board, flicked one of her hologram razorwings at Volt and snapped her fingers in annoyance.
“What?”
Ember shrugged. “Why are you not worried, Volt?”
Volt scratched his head. “I don’t know… I mean… It’s bad, really bad that Lotus is kinda missing…”
“Only kinda bad, kid?” Frost snapped. “I know every Tenno out there’s going on about this, but this is… our leader is gone.”
“Yeah but we’ll cope, right?” Volt sighed. “This happened before. When Hunhow came back. Lotus ran away and Teshin helped us for a bit.”
“That was different though,” Ember protested. “Lotus came back. We knew she would.”
Titania though shook her head. She didn’t say anything, she never said anything, but they all knew what she meant anyway.
“We didn’t know…” Volt continued. “We had no idea that she would come back. We had no idea we’d be able to re-establish connection with her after our ordeals with the Twin Queens. We have no idea what she even is.”
“Those are… some kinda traitorous words…” Ember hesitated.
“Actually, he kinda has a point…” Frost grunted. “Plus, you all saw it. She just took his hand and walked away. There wasn’t much hesitation, there wasn’t much of anything!” We didn’t even get a chance to say or do anything to convince her otherwise… Like the Lotus was under some kind of mind control…”
“You think this Ballas fellow is controlling her?” Ember started throwing out random ideas. “Maybe she planned to leave us all alone? Maybe she really does love him? Maybe she still is Margullis? Maybe…. I don’t know!” The Phoenix Warframe threw her hands up into the air in despair. “This really bothers me!”
Frost nodded in agreement, then turned to see who was standing behind them. “Oh, hello, Rhino. What’s up?”
“You guys heard?” Rhino almost shouted. “Did you all see what happened? Lotus has turned into a purple hologram!”
“She’s missing, Rhino!” Ember sighed.
“Ah whatever. We still got a Lotus. We’ll be fine! Anyway I gotta give that Steel Meridian chick my medallions!” Rhino spun round and charged off towards the Syndicate chambers.
Volt glanced at his fellow Tenno. “He does kinda have a point. We can still keep balance in the solar system, even if Lotus isn’t around.”
“True, I guess…” Ember whispered. “So we just carry on as normal?”
“There is nothing else we can do,” Frost shrugged. “Carrying on as normal, keeping the balance, is what the Lotus would want…”
“Plus, we still have Ordis!” Volt smiled. “He’ll help us!”